NeoCons is published by the Society for Conservation Biology, a global community of conservation professionals dedicated to promoting the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity (http://www.conservationbiology.org/).

As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by the Press. The mission of the National Academies Press (NAP) -- publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council -- is to disseminate the institutions' content as widely as possible while maintaining financial sustainability. To that end, NAP began offering free content online in 1994. Before today’s announcement, all PDFs were free to download in developing countries, and 65 percent of them were available for free to any user.

The free PDFs are available exclusively from the NAP’s website:
http://www.nap.edu.

The Society for Conservation Biology is pleased to solicit applications for the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program. These two year post-doctoral fellowships are open to applicants from anywhere in the world, and enable outstanding early-career scientists to improve and expand their research skills while directing their efforts towards problems of pressing conservation concern for the United States.

Each Fellow is mentored by both an academic sponsor who encourages the Fellow’s continued development as a conservation scientist, and a conservation practitioner who helps to connect the Fellow and her/his research to practical conservation challenges.

Fellows will spend up to three weeks per year during their fellowship attending orientation and training events. These offerings provide opportunities to cultivate professional networks and to gain better understanding of applied research needs. Fellows will participate as a group in three or more of these Program-sponsored meetings, conferences, or professional development events each year.

The Program especially encourages individuals who want to better link conservation science and theory with pressing policy and management applications to apply. We envision that the cadre of scientists supported by the Smith Fellows Program eventually will assume leadership positions across the field of conservation science. Fellows are selected on the basis of innovation, potential for leadership and strength of proposal.

The deadline for receipt of application materials is 16 September 2011.
The Program expects to select four Fellows in January 2012 for appointments to start between March and September 2012. Fellowship awards include an annual salary of $50,000, benefits, and generous travel and research budgets. For detailed proposal guidelines, please visit http://www.conbio.org/smithfellows/apply/. Questions may be directed to Shonda Foster, Program Coordinator, by emailing sfoster@conbio.org.

The Macaulay Library is very pleased to announce the recent completion of the digitization of the Ted Parker Neotropical sound collection. All of Ted's archived Neotropical recordings--from his first recording in 1973 (an Eared Quetzal in Mexico) to the recordings made just before his tragic death in 1993--are now digitized and playable on the Macaulay Library web site. This invaluable collection includes over 10,200 recordings totaling more than 260 hours of sound. All told, Ted recorded more than 1,850 species of birds, mammals, and anurans from Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

It is our great pleasure to be able to share Ted Parker's incredible sound recording legacy with all who are interested in Neotropical birds. All of his recordings are now playable on the Macaulay Library web site. They are best accessed by going to our Advanced Search page (http://macaulaylibrary.org/advancedSearch.do), typing "Parker" in the Recordist field, and then selecting the "Parker, Theodore A., III"
drop-down that appears. Like all recordings that are playable on the ML web site, Parker recordings are also available to researchers as 44.1kHz/16-bit .wav files upon request.